Chapter 1: The end was only the beginning

The end of the world.

There were people that believed it would come because of a virus, a few even thought it might be somewhat similar to the zombie apocalypse.

But everyone thought that at the very least they could see it coming. One that mutated from a virus that was previously known. Then scientists would be working hard to try and fix it somehow, using their advanced machines.

Sadly, the virus didn't come from planet Earth.

On another planet, far away, the Iceborne were making their last stand. It had been twenty years since the 'zombie virus' was created. The first wave was the worst, causing over half of the existing Iceborne to die, after this, things became a bit better.

The Iceborne knew magic well and they managed to take out large amounts of zombies with few casualties. That was until the virus mutated again. And again. And again.

After twenty long, long years, the Iceborne were nearly driven to extinction, yet they saw hope. One of their scientists had found a way to connect themselves to another planet with sentient life. If they connected the inhabitants of the other planet might be able to fight the virus in a better way they could. Perhaps they would be stronger than their own race, and better equipped to handle the virus.

Sadly this final hope vanished when they connected to planet Earth. Most of the remaining Iceborne died almost immediately due to the hot climate of the earth, as for the others, when they saw how weak the human race was, they could only await death.

When the two planets got connected, three things got added to planet Earth. Firstly, an extremely meager amount of mana, barely enough to help some humans to awaken some powers. The second thing that got transported over was the zombie virus, and the last thing was the system.

The few surviving Iceborne expected humanity to be able to keep going for a year at most, but humanity fought harder than they could ever imagine. Despite never having known it before the humans that managed to awaken magic progressed at an incredible pace. The human race built fortresses to keep the zombies out and shared all the info they had on the zombies with each other, using a mysterious power called the internet. Something they managed to keep running in some areas of the world for three full years.

Even after they kept fighting. When a fortress fell, the survivors would try to find a standing fortress and fight for them to try and resist the ever-evolving zombies. Some humans even found ways to use bits of magic despite the severe lack of mana, a truly impressive feat.

Nevertheless, five years after the emergence of the zombie virus, humanity was on its last legs. The final fortress of humanity was under attack, and once it was overwhelmed humanity would be no more.

Two-thousand people, the last of humanity. Shaun Williams was one of the people here. And even though he was one of the weaker ones here, he was still part of the elite, everyone here were some of the strongest humans that ever existed.

There were some that were even stronger than those here, but they didn't come. They most likely knew there was no more hope and through means unknown to Shaun, they left Earth and went to another planet.

The final bastion of humanity was a massive fortress, but at this point, walls could do little to defend them, and there were too few people that learned enough about runes and too little time to properly reinforce them. Explosions could be heard every second. It was hard to say which ones were from blowers and which ones from the mines they had set up.

Soon the inside of the fortress got rushed by large numbers of zombies. At first, Shaun was using a spear, but soon it broke and he fought with his hands, he killed zombie after zombie, without having time to do anything else.

One by one, humans fell, Shaun could even hear the howls of a juggernaut, probably fighting against their elite. It was only when Shaun ripped the throat out of a howler that he realized something.

He didn't hear a single scream coming from a human. The juggernaut had stopped yelling out in rage, and there were no gunshots from those that still preferred to use a gun.

He felt a deep solitude when he realized he was probably the last human alive.

When he was entangled by a veggie a leaper jumped right on his back. Soon there was nothing more he could do, and he died, and with him, the last living human on Earth.

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Shaun breathed in the air as his chest rose. He felt light shining on his eyes, bright light.

'Electricity? Did we win? I suppose there will no longer be a need to preserve energy.'

Shaun thought, but he felt weak, extremely, extremely weak. Yet even though he felt weak, there was no pain, well almost none.

He covered his eyes before trying to open them, it had been a very, very long time since he had had the pleasure to see a bright light, he looked forward to being able to see things properly for once, with all of their vibrant colors.

Yet when, after a while, he opened his eyes. He didn't see a lamp before him, with a pure white ceiling. When he opened his eyes he first felt difficulty breathing, then he felt tears rolling down from his eyes.

When he looked up he saw a beautiful vibrant blue, with white clouds floating through the sky. The amount of shock he felt was immense, to finally see such a beautiful sight again.

Then, after a few minutes, Shaun managed to look to his left, and what he saw made him feel even more shocked. There was a green so bright it threatened to take over his entire vision. Grass, he was laying on a sea of grass.

'Am I dead? I think I like being dead.'

Shain thought while wiping away his tears. But just when he thought everything would be okay he heard a groaning come from his right.

He immediately jumped up, with much more difficulty compared to normal, and looked at what had made that noise.

Lying next to him in the grass was a girl with black hair. Her eyes were closed as she extended a hand to block the sunlight but somehow Shaun knew they were blue, as blue as the skies above. Shaun saw she was quite skinny as well and couldn't help recalling memories from long ago.

How long had it been since he thought of her? How long had it been since he allowed himself to look back? But here she was, the first person he cared about that died because he had been weak.

"Hey Ava…" Shaun said, some disbelief in his voice.

After ending this sentence Shain felt a completely unexpected, yet genuine, smile come onto his face. He wasn't sure how long it had been since he had genuinely felt happy, but it felt good, very good.

After getting another tired groan in response, the smile on Shaun's face widened a little more. He remembered this day, he recalled that the day before the apocalypse he and Ava drank a little too much and fell asleep in a field. Shortly after they woke up, they both went their separate ways. Half a day later the apocalypse came and the next time he saw her, she got infected.

After thinking for a moment, Shaun stood up and reached for his pocket. There he found a phone, it was thin and feeble, much unlike what was used in the apocalypse, but he still remembered how to use it.

He did feel lucky that his code to unlock his phone was his own birthday date, at least he still remembered that. Shaun looked through his phone for a bit, the internet still worked and so he decided to go onto social media again and see what was going on.

He saw pictures of his friends, there had been a party the previous night many of his friends went to. There was actually someone else in the pictures he recognized. One of his friends, Dave. One year later he would meet Dave, at that point he had become the leader of a group of bandits.

Shaun thought about everything as he turned back to Ava, by now she had woken up and she yawned as she was stretching a bit. Grass might look comfortable but it wasn't the most optimal place to sleep at.

"Alright Shaun, I only gotta head home for food around noon, so we still got about two hours to hang out! Whattcha wanna do?"

Shaun hesitated when he looked the pretty girl in the eyes, he was still stunned by how everything around him looked and it was hard to focus in this scenario. He did remember something though. Ava would normally have to kill her family shortly after arriving home. Her father would turn in the first wave, infecting her brother and mother shortly after.

He didn't want her to have to do that this time, he had killed many, many zombies, but the only kills that really left trauma were those where he had to kill someone he knew.

Shaun let out a somewhat fake smile as he approached her "Let's go out into the city for the day! We can go eat something on our own!"

Ava nodded casually as she spoke herself "Alright then, I'll send my mom a text I'll be eating with you tonight. You thinking McDo?"

Shaun nodded as he barely stopped himself from sighing in relief. He knew Ava didn't have much money, and neither did he. They were currently both seventeen years old and about to be in their last year of high school. The summer break had just started so they hadn't earned any money yet, they had both decided to do a small job in the second half of the summer break and chill during the first month.

"Let's hang out in the city until five, then we go eat something, alright?"

Shaun asked and Ava nodded. She noticed something seemed to be bothering him, she wondered if she did anything weird the previous day but let it be for now, they could talk about it at a more suitable time.

Little did she know, after today, that would be the least of her worries